Kevin Smith became more famous for just talking than he ever was for making movies like Clerks, Chasing Amy and Zack and Miri Make a Porno. His public speaking Q&A sessions fill large theaters, including Carnegie Hall. Arguably, his tales of debating a giant spider with producer Jon Peters, finding a camel for Prince and having unprotected sex with an open sore on his penis contain more laughs than any one of his films. In between public talks, Smith has graduated from journaling his random diatribes online to recording them in podcast form.

The Smodcast is Smith's audio sessions with friend and producer Scott Mosier. The name is simply the combination of the names Smith and Mosier with the word podcast. They debate such diverse topics as Helen Keller (was she faking it? Did Annie Sullivan have to explain sex to her?), cloning (would your clone be your best friend? If you slept with your clone, would you be gay?), the metaphysical (What if Smith hired Jennifer Connelly to become Scott Mosier while Mosier was still there observing?) and just plain sex talk (lap dances, puberty education literature, etc.) Friends and frequent collaborators Bryon Johnson, Walt Flanagan and Malcolm Ingram also join in from time to time.

"On some level, it fulfills that childhood aspiration to have a comedy album," Smith told Suicide Girls in an exclusive phone interview. "That's what I listened to when I was growing up, people doing bits on comedy albums whether it'd be sketches or just standup material. Number one, I'm not a comic so I could never do that sort of thing. But, because of what I do, I've gotten this kind of backdoor into the world of standing on a stage with a mic and making people laugh, this quasi-standup world of mine with this Q&A or by extension, the Smodcast stuff. So it kind of works like that, where you could put it out there and people could listen to it. Granted, we're not selling it like they did back in the day with comedy records, but I kind of dig it. I know on some level it fulfills that desire of the 11 or 12-year-old in me to be Bill Cosby for a minute, but a really filthy mouthed version of him."

A collection of Smodcasts is coming out in print form as the book Shootin the Sh*t with Kevin Smith: The Best of Smodcast. Smith took the interview call from home, with his wife Jennifer Schwalbach out at Yoga and his daughter Harley at a playdate. That left Smith free and clear to discuss the depraved subjects of his Smodcasts and start a few new ones too.

Fred Topel: Did you always conceive of the Smodcast as potential material for a new book?

KS: The weird thing is, the idea for the Smodcast book came directly from the good folks at Titan. [Editor] Adam Newell was just like, Hey, we had this idea about we're going to do an interview book with you, but why don't we just transcribe some of the Smodcasts? They're really funny. And I was just like, I don't know if it would really work in print form, dude. He had two of them done, transcribed and then sent them to me. Reading it out loud, I was like, That is actually kind of funny. And it's weird because I know the material so you'd imagine that wouldn't have caught me off guard but a couple things made me chuckle out loud just by reading it.

FT: Did you ever follow up on Helen Keller?

KS: It's so weird you say that because two days ago, somebody on the Twitter feed said, Hey, here's a video of Helen Keller. It was on YouTube and it was Helen Keller essentially displaying, showing the folks that she could indeed speak, putting her fingers to Annie Sullivans mouth and throat or something like that. Then she kind of echoed what Annie Sullivan said. It was amazing. I'd never seen it before and I'd never seen what either of them had looked like but I saw the cinematic depictions and sh*t. You're always seeing the wild feral girl in the beginning, and she just looked like some old timey lady, but not like this feral wild child that could barely speak or barely knew of its own existence. What was great about that episode of Smodcast was how much we learned after that. I know way more about Helen Keller now than I did before we did it, and it became a kind of signature Smodcast mood for me and Mosier where we would just speak at great lengths about something we didn't know that much about. And we never spoke with authority, like, Oh, this is what really happened but it was like, I think I remember hearing it like this and this kind of thing happened. Then the tradition that follows is you go to the website and you read the 100 corrections that people are like, Dude, Helen Keller wasn't born that way. For a year and a half she could hear and see. Or, There is video of Helen Keller. Stuff like that, where you're just like, Well, I guess we were way the f*ck off base.

FT: Well, you asked if she had sex or wanted sex, and then how Annie Sullivan explained it to her. A biography by Dorothy Hermann says she did like sex.

KS: That is wild. That gives me a great deal of relief but how does that get explained? I mean, how the f*ck did Annie Sullivan explain that.

FT: Don't we have to read the biography now to find out?

KS: I don't know. I don't know if I could commit that much time. I'd rather somebody else read it, distilled it on the internet, I could read that.

FT: When you talk about having Jennifer Connelly remake Scott Mosier, did it occur to you that that's similar to the plot of Synechdoche, New York?

KS: No, is it? I don't know, I never saw Synechdoche but now, to even have kind of a similar idea to a genius like Charlie Kaufman would be kinda cool. But no, no. I don't know if Mosier ever saw it but I love the idea of f*ckin Jennifer Connelly trying to play Mosier.

FT: Now since you talk about sex a lot, do you mind some dirty questions?

KS: Not at all.

FT: For some reason I'm worried about offending you.

KS: Oh, never.

FT: On that note...

KS: Get to the dirty stuff, go.

FT: You always say you like your wife to be on top. Can you come that way?

KS: That's the only way I come, brotha. I mean, I could come any way I guess but, and this is so weird, we were talking about this last night. I have been married for 10 years and my wife has never really seen me do anything physical, up to and including my very limited role in our sex life where she does 95% of the work. But, when she saw me go play in the Walter Gretzky Street Hockey Tournament up in Brantford, For a dude of my size I'm pretty limber. And, I was surprisingly good, for a guy who hadn't played goal in 15 years. The wife was just like, it was almost as if I was like, Oh, you didn't know that I could make my c*ck three inches bigger? Like, I've never told you that before? I'm sorry. I just never wanted to do it until now. It was just she'd never seen that side of me. I caught a momentary flash of her being utterly impressed but then she quickly put it down because she's like, I'm not going to give him this. Because she thinks I get too much affection everywhere in this world anyway. So I waited for like a minute or two to pass and then I was just like, Admit that you got just a little bit moist when I blocked that shot. And she's like, I gotta tell you, it's impressive but it's befuddling because you won't f*ck me. I always have to f*ck you yet I can watch you explode in a display of physical prowess. I don't understand why you don't bring that to the bedroom. And I was like, Because I don't have to. What's the point? If you do it all, I'm happy with that. And you like it better doing it also. I'm happy with that. That's a good thing for me.

KS: It is. I used to be a huge foreplay guy. I married somebody who's not. I married somebody who's just like, Why are you wasting my time? Let's f*ckin bone. So it's kinda hot. She's very much the dude in this relationship. I am total femme dude in every way, shape and form with the exception of I don't take it. She just controls it on when it comes to that aspect of our lives and I wouldn't have it any other way.

FT: Now to get deep. You talk about the ramifications of cloning in the Smodcast and the book. Do you think about the current debates like health care? They're worried about death panels. How could they ever handle it if human cloning became a real possibility?

KS: You're killing me here, man. You're blowing my mind. I mean, we all just sat around goofing about Walt wanting a clone which we all thought was adorable. So uncharacteristic that the dude expressed like, I've always wanted a clone. The ramifications of cloning we touch on a little bit only inasmuch as let's get the comedy going. I don't think it's going to happen, dude. I mean, it ain't gonna happen for years. We really have to evolve as a species and a culture before that could ever be considered bringing into practical reality. Like creating whole people just to harvest them or creating whole people, I mean that's just more people to feel. This planet has a problem feeding who's here now.

FT: Do you think about politics? Do you ever share political views?

KS: Oh, like in practicality, in real life, outside of Smodcast?

FT: Yeah, because you stay away from political stuff in the public forums.

KS: Yeah, just because I'm not that bright. I could speak knowingly or knowledgably about any number of subjects but politics, not at all. Mosier is our political guy and even he's not as immersed in it, but man, he knows way more than I do, that's for sure. I always tend to stay away. I'm not very political. It's weird, when I became successful inasmuch as I started making money doing what I love, people were like, You should go Republican, dude, because you've got money now. I'm like, Why? I don't understand that. Well, they'll help you keep that money. I don't know, the money aspect to this job, I've got a good relationship with it. I'm never ashamed of it but at the same time, it's never been the driving factor so its also never been a problem for me. So for me, it's always about how cool it is to do it. You look at something like Clerks II. I literally took no salary to make the movie. Nothing whatsoever. I earned nothing off of Clerks II. I just did it because I wanted to do it and I was like, Thank God somebody's giving me the money to do it so I don't care. I'm just happy to do it. [My next film] A Couple of Dicks, I took a huge price cut to do the movie just because that was the only way the movie was going to get done based on the budget. I was like, You know what? I always wanted to make a Bruce Willis movie.

FT: You got to be in Live Free or Die Hard and now direct a Bruce Willis movie. Things really worked out for you since he turned down Jersey Girl.

KS: Yeah, things panned out for me, man. I don't know, you stick around long enough and all your dreams come true I guess.

FT: What can you tell Batman fans about the series youre writing, Widening Gyre?

KS: The story, we re-introduced Silver St. Cloud into the matrix. Batman's past kinda comes into his present and it's good, dude. I like it. I hope people aren't getting ready for a f*ckin slam bang action-fest run. It's really kind of more about what happens when Bruce reaches this point in his life where he's seen his kid sidekicks grow up and go onto their own lives and have normal lives and girlfriends, the things that other people have that he's always sacrificed, that he's always said, I could never have. Suddenly, it's coinciding with the appearance of this new vigilante who Bruce is just like, You know, I've always been training kids. Maybe if I f*ckin brought an adult under my wing, it might be different and I can take some more time for myself. So that's kind of what it's about and I probably turned off everybody that had half an interest in it but I don't know, I dig it. The folks at DC have been so accommodating and wonderful and what not. Everybody, our team on the book is great. This dude Mike Marts is a really wonderful editor that Dan Didio gave us and we got Art Thibert doing the inks on this one. He honors Walt [Flanagan]'s inks but still kinda brings out a lot of great stuff in it. We got Art Lyon doing colors. Looks really, really f*ckin good. It's just a really strong book, so happy with it and it's something that I'm going to enjoy. I remember reading the kind of mediocre review and going, like, I don't know, dude. I'm sitting here holding my Cacophony hardcover and it's just a cool thing. Whether you like the story or not is kind of irrelevant at this point because I'm holding a hardcover of this comic book I wrote a couple months back and my friend Walt Flanagan, who I've known for over 20 years, drew. It's just way bigger than whether or not somebody thinks I did a good job writing Batman dialogue. This is far bigger than that, dude. This isn't about me making a paycheck. This is about a kid getting the keys to the f*ckin candy store and being told like, Hey, go have fun. With your friend! Like oh, that's amazing. Sh*t like that happens to me and I'm always just like oh, that's the best part of the job, man. Don't get me wrong, money is f*ckin cool and it affords you a lot of cool things but money's just never been the driving factor for me.

FT: When will you start work on your Green Hornet comic, based on the script you wrote for a movie back at The Weinstein Company?

KS:Dicks took a lot out of me and rightfully so. I had to devote all my attention to it. For the first month, I was splitting my attention to the movie and the Carnegie Hall thing, the Walter Gretzky Street Hockey Tournament thing back in June, but then once Carnegie Hall was done, then it was all I could focus just on Dicks. Everything else went to the side. So now that I'm done shooting Dicks and I'm working on fine cutting it right now, I can kind of go back to the Green Hornet script and break it down because I don't want to just give them the script that I wrote for the movie and be like, Here, figure it out. I want to see if I can maybe break it down for whoever the artist is going to be, the same way that I write any comic book script. [Dynamite President and Publisher] Nick [Barrucci] wants to make it part of the canon for their Green Hornet tenureship so I said, Dude, that's very flattering. I think my script for Green Hornet was all right, but in some places it was goofy. I don't know if you want that to be part of your continuity. And he was like, Well, we can have multiple Hornets as you know. We can have Hornet in the past, you're doing the Hornet most people would know from the Van Williams/Bruce Lee era so to speak. Then we'll do future Hornet as well. No, I want your story to be in continuity. So I don't know, I'm still going to fight him on that I think.

FT:You were one of the Weinsteins golden boys back in the Miramax days. Even with the recent success of Inglourious Basterds, why do you think The Weinstein Company has struggled? They used to be the masters of indie films.

KS: Yeah, you're absolutely right. They were the masters and they invented the game but the problem is, everybody else learned how to play the game too. Like when Wayne Gretzky broke out in the NHL, nobody had ever seen a player like him before but by the time Wayne Gretzky retired, there were a lot of people who played not specifically like Wayne Gretzky but a lot of people were now playing at his level of proficiency. I think it's kind of the same thing here. When Miramax got into the game, they were such f*ckin game changers, man. Nobody knew what was happening. It was like watching Billy Smith get scored on by Wayne Gretzky. Maybe not Billy Smith because he's actually able to f*ckin defend against Wayne Gretzky. But it's like watching an NHL goalie circa 1983/84 face off against Wayne Gretzky. They just weren't prepared. They were like, Where the f*ck did this come from? It was the same thing with the brothers Weinstein and Miramax. When they sprang onto the scene, they took the world by storm. They were just brilliant geniuses at doing what they did. But the thing is, you do that long enough and people observe you, they're going to learn how to do it too and other people started doing it. For me, to my reckoning, the moment that Dreamworks put out American Beauty, that's when other studios figured out how to make a Miramax movie. Once that happened, they had way more resources, all these studios and whatnot, to make those kind of pictures. So Harvey started competing at that level and that's where the Cold Mountains come from and The Aviator. The dude created something that everyone else learned how to do from him and then they just learned to do it so well that he kind of had to learn to play catch up. It doesn't mean that theyll never be great again but you've got to stay sharp, dude.

FT: Finally, to preview A Couple of Dicks, how did you end up directing a movie you didn't write?

KS:Dicks kind of sprang at me, which sounds so erotic, it was after San Diego Comic Con, not this year but the year before. Jeff Robinov who heads up the motion picture group over at Warner Brothers was at this Q&A I'd done with Zack Snyder. It was me, Zack Snyder, Frank Miller and Judd Apatow and I guess I was funny because the dude was like, Send him in because I want to meet with him. It was weird because we'd had some friction in the past and we were just like, Hey, let's put that aside. He's going, I think you're funny and I want you to work here and blah blah blah. And I was like, Yeah, man, one day, whatever you got, we'll see. He had sent it to me and he hit me with the e-mail with, What'd you ever think of Dicks? I was like, Hey, man, I don't run that way. Then he explained what he was talking about and all bad d*ck joke puns aside, I read the script. I was like, Wow, this is kinda like a cop movie if I would've wrote the cop movie. He loved Zack and Miri so he was like, I want you to do what you did to Zack and Miri but with this movie. I was like, What, give it a f*ckin title that nobody will go see it and we'll have to fight for? Because that's where we are right now. [Laughs] Fighting for the Couple of Dicks title. Not fighting but its weird. It's not a fight yet. CBS, NBC and ABC all said that they would not run a spot before 9 o'clock p.m. Now, that's fine because it's an R-rated movie but at the same time, you want to be advertising this R-rated movie during sports.

FT: So you might change the name before this movie comes out?

KS: Look, Warner Brothers is doing everything they can but you can't fight City Hall. This all comes down to Janet Jackson's boobs still. That's where the problem is. I'm just like what f*ckin financial crisis are we in where a network can afford to turn down pricey top dollar advertising just because they're like, We're uncomfortable with the word Dicks, what it may infer to people. I mean, yes, it's a double entendre. Of course it's a double entendre. That's what's funny about it. It's not even a discussion, dude. In this world, it's just like, All right, of course we'll do something about it because why would we go through all this effort just to have nobody see the movie because we can't advertise the movie because of the title? Simply change the title. Movie doesn't change. If they had gotten me prior to Zack and Miri, I probably would've went down swinging like, No, its all about the integrity of the title. After having gone through the debacle of the Zack and Miri Make a Porno title, believe me, dude. I've been f*cked once. I don't want to get f*cked again. Probably not a week of my life goes by in the last year where I wasn't like, Why didnt I just call the f*ckin thing Dirty Movie? What was I, an idiot? When Humpday came out, I was like, These motherf*ckers are brilliant! What a great title. Why did I go with Zack and Miri Make a Porno? I'm such an idiot. I mean, I like the movie and stuff. It's just the title, man. The title really, really hurt us.

Ok. I've only been on sg for a week or so. And I just got around to exploring the interviews section today. I have to say. I'm a little disappointed. Not in the interview, or any of the subjects, but in the fact that comments are so low! I mean. Kevin Smith is a cultural icon! And only 11 people have something to say? I know this is a site that is primarily sexual, but the deepest sexiest thing in the world to me is intelligence, and KS has it in spades. He's amazing. I love that there is an interview with him. Also. I'm jealous. I wish I could interview him.